'What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide," says Camille Paglia. This self-described "notorious Amazon feminist" isn't telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can't Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that's just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation.

When Ms. Paglia, now 66, burst onto the national stage in 1990 with the publishing of "Sexual Personae," she immediately established herself as a feminist who was the scourge of the movement's establishment, a heretic to its orthodoxy. Pick up the 700-page tome, subtitled "Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, " and it's easy to see why. "If civilization had been left in female hands," she wrote, "we would still be living in grass huts."

The fact that the acclaimed book—the first of six; her latest, "Glittering Images," is a survey of Western art—was rejected by seven publishers and five agents before being printed by Yale University Press only added to Ms. Paglia's sense of herself as a provocateur in a class with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

But unlike those radio jocks, Ms. Paglia has scholarly chops: Her dissertation adviser at Yale was Harold Bloom, and she is as likely to discuss Freud, Oscar Wilde or early Native American art as to talk about Miley Cyrus.

Ms. Paglia relishes her outsider persona, having previously described herself as an egomaniac and "abrasive, strident and obnoxious." Talking to her is like a mental CrossFit workout. One moment she's praising pop star Rihanna ("a true artist"), then blasting ObamaCare ("a monstrosity," though she voted for the president), global warming ("a religious dogma"), and the idea that all gay people are born gay ("the biggest canard," yet she herself is a lesbian).

Neil Davies

But no subject gets her going more than when I ask if she really sees a connection between society's attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women and the collapse of Western civilization.

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. "The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster," she says.

"These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too. They literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality."

The results, she says, can be seen in everything from the dysfunction in Washington (where politicians "lack practical skills of analysis and construction") to what women wear. "So many women don't realize how vulnerable they are by what they're doing on the street," she says, referring to women who wear sexy clothes.

When she has made this point in the past, Ms. Paglia—who dresses in androgynous jackets and slacks—has been told that she believes "women are at fault for their own victimization." Nonsense, she says. "I believe that every person, male and female, needs to be in a protective mode at all times of alertness to potential danger. The world is full of potential attacks, potential disasters." She calls it "street-smart feminism."

Ms. Paglia argues that the softening of modern American society begins as early as kindergarten. "Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It's oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys," she says, pointing to the most obvious example: the way many schools have cut recess. "They're making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters."

She is not the first to make this argument, as Ms. Paglia readily notes. Fellow feminist Christina Hoff Sommers has written about the "war against boys" for more than a decade. The notion was once met with derision, but now data back it up: Almost one in five high-school-age boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, boys get worse grades than girls and are less likely to go to college.

Ms. Paglia observes this phenomenon up close with her 11-year-old son, Lucien, whom she is raising with her ex-partner, Alison Maddex, an artist and public-school teacher who lives 2 miles away. She sees the tacit elevation of "female values"—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.

By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. "This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it's all about neutralization of maleness." The result: Upper-middle-class men who are "intimidated" and "can't say anything. . . . They understand the agenda." In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by "never telling the truth to women" about sex, and by keeping "raunchy" thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America's brawny industrial base, leaves many men with "no models of manhood," she says. "Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There's nothing left. There's no room for anything manly right now."

The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm "inspires me as a writer," she says, adding: "If we had to go to war," the callers "are the men that would save the nation."

And men aren't the only ones suffering from the decline of men. Women, particularly elite upper-middle-class women, have become "clones" condemned to "Pilates for the next 30 years," Ms. Paglia says. "Our culture doesn't allow women to know how to be womanly," adding that online pornography is increasingly the only place where men and women in our sexless culture tap into "primal energy" in a way they can't in real life.

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a "revalorization" of traditional male trades—the ones that allow women's studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing).

" Michelle Obama's going on: 'Everybody must have college.' Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum" and "people end up saddled with huge debts," says Ms. Paglia. What's driving the push toward universal college is "social snobbery on the part of a lot of upper-middle-class families who want the sticker in the window."

Ms. Paglia, who has been a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, sees her own students as examples. "I have woodworking students who, even while they're in class, are already earning money making furniture and so on," she says. "My career has been in art schools cause I don't get along with normal academics."

To hear her tell it, getting along has never been Ms. Paglia's strong suit. As a child, she felt stifled by the expectations of girlhood in the 1950s. She fantasized about being a knight, not a princess. Discovering pioneering female figures as a teenager, most notably Amelia Earhart, transformed Ms. Paglia's understanding of what her future might hold.

These iconoclastic women of the 1930s, like Earhart and Katharine Hepburn, remain her ideal feminist role models: independent, brave, enterprising, capable of competing with men without bashing them. But since at least the late 1960s, she says, fellow feminists in the academy stopped sharing her vision of "equal-opportunity feminism" that demands a level playing field without demanding special quotas or protections for women.

She proudly recounts her battle, while a graduate student at Yale in the late 1960s and early '70s, with the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band over the Rolling Stones: Ms. Paglia loved "Under My Thumb," a song the others regarded as chauvinist. Then there was the time she "barely got through the dinner" with a group of women's studies professors at Bennington College, where she had her first teaching job, who insisted that there is no hormonal difference between men and women. "I left before dessert."

In her view, these ideological excesses bear much of the blame for the current cultural decline. She calls out activists like Gloria Steinem, Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi for pushing a version of feminism that says gender is nothing more than a social construct, and groups like the National Organization for Women for making abortion the singular women's issue.

By denying the role of nature in women's lives, she argues, leading feminists created a "denatured, antiseptic" movement that "protected their bourgeois lifestyle" and falsely promised that women could "have it all." And by impugning women who chose to forgo careers to stay at home with children, feminists turned off many who might have happily joined their ranks.

But Ms. Paglia's criticism shouldn't be mistaken for nostalgia for the socially prescribed roles for men and women before the 1960s. Quite the contrary. "I personally have disobeyed every single item of the gender code," says Ms. Paglia. But men, and especially women, need to be honest about the role biology plays and clear-eyed about the choices they are making.

Sex education, she says, simply focuses on mechanics without conveying the real "facts of life," especially for girls: "I want every 14-year-old girl . . . to be told: You better start thinking what do you want in life. If you just want a career and no children you don't have much to worry about. If, however, you are thinking you'd like to have children some day you should start thinking about when do you want to have them.

Early or late? To have them early means you are going to make a career sacrifice, but you're going to have more energy and less risks. Both the pros and the cons should be presented."

For all of Ms. Paglia's barbs about the women's movement, it seems clear that feminism—at least of the equal-opportunity variety—has triumphed in its basic goals. There is surely a lack of women in the C-Suite and Congress, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who would admit that he believes women are less capable.

To save feminism as a political movement from irrelevance, Ms. Paglia says, the women's movement should return to its roots. That means abandoning the "nanny state" mentality that led to politically correct speech codes and college disciplinary committees that have come to replace courts. The movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one "open to stay-at-home moms" and "not just the career woman."

More important, Ms. Paglia says, if the women's movement wants to be taken seriously again, it should tackle serious matters, like rape in India and honor killings in the Muslim world, that are "more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus."

Her opinions on the "neutering" of boys hold some water .......... many masculine traits are attacked as negative behaviours and not in sync with society.

Trying to diminish and demonise many of men's innate traits is the cause of many problems with young men feeling they have no role or space in modern society and this is reflected in a very large slant in the percentage of male suicide in the younger adult age bracket compared to females.

Framing rape as a strictly feminist concern rather than as the humanitarian issue it is is honestly pretty diminutive (well fuck it, my point is that it should be expected of all interest groups that can be classified as ideologically humanitarian to have a hand in providing a solution to the problem, but she frames the issue in a way that paints feminists as the only ones who can be blamed for irresponsibility for the lack of activism about that particular subject).

I find it hilarious, that she thinks callers to sports radio, will be the ones who save the nation. Sports radio callers are just forum trolls, with even less ability to interact with the outside world.

The wiping out of manhood or whatever is going pretty badly considering that we still consume American football at an insane degree and never cut back on military spending.

The people I see are super paranoid and protective as well and this "people think other people are nice" idea doesn't seem to be happening much either, but maybe I hang out with people different from the norm.

Framing feminism as somehow not humanitarian is honestly pretty diminutive.

Not entirely sure that I can agree when it is obviously slanted toward female concerns (not a problem) and not purely with the concerns of all.

Also some of the issues described by this person and many of the issues apparent among young boys and men maybe the result, indirectly due to the pursuit of feminist agendas (rightfully so).

I do not believe feminism has any plans to purposefully diminish men but indirectly and without care, ensuring better and more fair treatment for women has possibly caused some issues for boys within society, especially when many male traits are demonised and said to have no place within society.

Not all feminist look to devalue masculinity. Heck feminism also works for men, since feminism brought about the flexibility of lifestyle not tied to longstanding gender roles. Women were free to not pursue family life if that's there bag, or postpone it and men were freed from marrying just to start a family.

There's a backlash from both, though. Women as lacking motherly virtue and men being too immature for marriage. That's backlash is normal, though. We hate change in a societal level.

The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm "inspires me as a writer," she says, adding: "If we had to go to war," the callers "are the men that would save the nation."

Hah.

Hahahahahaha.

Ms. Paglia observes this phenomenon up close with her 11-year-old son, Lucien, whom she is raising with her ex-partner, Alison Maddex, an artist and public-school teacher who lives 2 miles away. She sees the tacit elevation of "female values"—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.

Is she claiming those are 'male values'?

I feel like she has a lot of creative arguments for supporting classical gender roles and some other archaic ideas.

Not all feminist look to devalue masculinity. Heck feminism also works for men, since feminism brought about the flexibility of lifestyle not tied to longstanding gender roles. Women were free to not pursue family life if that's there bag, or postpone it and men were freed from marrying just to start a family.

There's a backlash from both, though. Women as lacking motherly virtue and men being too immature for marriage. That's backlash is normal, though. We hate change in a societal level.

People freaking about "hookup culture" is hilarious. It's merely straight sex culture starting to resemble gay culture now that birth control is out there.

Every time someone says modern society is hostile to men, I always think they're talking about a very specific subset of men rather than men in general because most men don't follow the hyper-masculine ideal people like her talk about.

People freaking about "hookup culture" is hilarious. It's merely straight sex culture starting to resemble gay culture now that birth control is out there.

Also, if I remember correctly, the actual number of partners for people has stayed pretty constant since the early 90's. It's just people are more open about it. At most, there's maybe some more oral sex happening than in the past.

I find it hilarious, that she thinks callers to sports radio, will be the ones who save the nation. Sports radio callers are just forum trolls, with even less ability to interact with the outside world.

I found that just bizarre. Armchair quarterbacks are the guys who will save us? Don't think so.

But I did find some of her other points interesting. There is not a lot of emphasis on hard skills like construction, plumbing etc when growing up. I think all people (men and women) would benefit if the education system did a better job of putting people into those vocations.

Every time someone says modern society is hostile to men, I always think they're talking about a very specific subset of men rather than men in general because most men don't follow the hyper-masculine ideal people like her talk about.

Some very interesting comments, especially about men and education. Good read thank you op. It's kinda sadthat people will pull one thing out of this article to try and discredit everything she is saying.

Some very interesting comments, especially about men and education. Good read thank you op. It's kinda sadthat people will pull one thing out of this article to try and discredit everything she is saying.

Any light shone upon issues facing men often garners negative attention.

I found that just bizarre. Armchair quarterbacks are the guys who will save us? Don't think so.

you guys are taking that quote out of context. Essentially what she said was that men are not communicating, they are neutered. The line right before or after she talks about sports talk says "if you want to hear what men really feel..." A lot of sports talk radio these days has morphed into "guy talk" where the hosts are more like a couple of guys at a bar bitching about normal things along with sports talk.

"Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. "

" I consider myself 100 percent a feminist, at odds with the feminist establishment in America. For me the great mission of feminism is to seek the full political and legal equality of women with men. However, I disagree with many of my fellow feminists as an equal opportunity feminist, who believes that feminism should only be interested in equal rights before the law. I utterly oppose special protection for women where I think that a lot of the feminist establishment has drifted in the last 20 years. "

"We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible."

"If civilization had been left in female hands," she wrote, "we would still be living in grass huts."

Yeah because there are no women at all interested in engineering.

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service.

Yeah because America doesn't already overly deify military service to the point of fanaticism. We celebrate military service, nationalism, and patriotism almost to the levels of a fascist country. We are one controlling right wing party away from having all of the distinctions of fascism.

Yeah because America doesn't already overly deify military service to the point of fanaticism. We celebrate military service, nationalism, and patriotism almost to the levels of a fascist country. We are one controlling right wing party away from having all of the distinctions of fascism.

Thats the point its fake and contrived patriotism that means nothing. If we realized the truth of our foreign policy or all just realized any war is in no way porisive for anyone directly involved